The Honorable Gentlemurloc From Elwynn Forest Has The Floor.

Post navigation

Quotas in Quests

A typical quest will tell you to gather X number of items or kill Y number of mobs. And if it is a well-written quest, the number will have some correlation to the quest goal.

Examples

“Kill 10 Goretusks! Take their livers! Make a pie.”

If you have to gather 10 Goretusk livers to make a pie, it’s because the pie takes 10 Goretusk livers. If you have to send back 10 troops, it’s because that’s how many the commander needs. This all makes sense so far.

“Thin out their numbers. Like 10 is enough.”

So, killing 10 Naga doesn’t really make that much sense in the grand scheme of things. Why not kill 100? There are a ton of those buggers out there. Oh well, I guess every bit helps. Presumably there are other people being instructed to work together. Each of us kills 10, then a lot of naga get killed. Yay team!

“Rescue the tadpoles! Let 10 of them out of the cages.”

I’m sorry, what? These are your kids we’re talking about. You want me to only rescue 10 and then the rest of the little buggers are on their own? Really? Even if I want to let out more, usually I can’t after the quest number has been reached. And once I turn in the quest, tough for any future tadpoles in cages that I happen to come across.

The one that got me lately was in Uldum, where you pull the poor Ramkahen folks out of the sand. It’s unfortunate not just for the original quest (just six? what about the others??) but also going back to that area to farm for volatile air from the elementals. It feels just wrong to walk all over those guys while they’re flailing helplessly – and you don’t even have the option to pull them out just to be nice. “Sorry guys, I’m here for my mats, have fun in the ground!”

Ahh, reminds me of the Draenei starter area. After you finish the quest to mend the survivors, you see a ton of them still lying about moaning and you can’t do anything about it, not even as a healer (which I find *incredibly* unrealistic).

You used to be able to, I remember saving lots of injured survivors on my early Draenei because I couldn’t stand all the moaning and pleas for help. I guess Blizzard decided that this kind of thing would open the door to griefing if someone not on the quest decided to randomly rescue all the NPCs in the area and prevent people from actually doing the quest. It still bugs me though.

Yes. But since my character is a goblin, it’s easy for me to imagine him running past the helpless prisoners about to be sacrificed to an ancient whatsits and waving at the 5th-100th of them and muttering, “Time is money, friend” as they plea for their lives through the cage bars.

You gotta think about the daycare costs though. As distressing as losing some of their children might be, if you can only afford to put 10 in daycare, then you have them rescue 10.
Plus, if you have entire swarms at once you probably aren’t as attached to them as you would be if you only have 1 at a time like humanoids so a certain level of pragmatism I’m sure kicks in when you have 30 babies at once.

I always spent the whole draenei starting area casting Gift of the Naaru every time it was off cooldown on a crash survivor. I’m pretty sure this habit killed me once or twice, back when the mobs in starting areas were actually aggressive.

It’s a metagame element that sadly comes a necessity in a world that is inhabited by more than just yourself. If WoW were a single player game, I’m sure they would only be 10 tadpoles to save. But since it isn’t, you have deal with this weird mish mash of fiction and fact that essentially says “Yes, I know you SEE there’s more X to be saved, but in canon/lore you actually saved them all.” Or at least that’s how I get myself to sleep at night.

Or on the other hand, those 10 tadpoles will now know that they were the MOST loved of all the kids. Mwa ha ha.

I find all of the quests to save X amount of people pretty horrible. Really? So I’m just gonna leave everyone else? Okay, sure I play a Warlock and she probably doesn’t give a rat’s ass about these people if they won’t let her steal their souls or something.. but still.. the player behind her kinda winces.

Rescue quests really get to me. I always try to save as many NPCs as I can while I’m doing the quest, above and beyond the quest quota if at all possible, and I *always* wish that I could keep opening cages (or whatever) after I’ve turned in the quest — especially when I come back into the area to farm.

I try to tell myself, as Vrykerion says, that from a personal character history perspective all the cages, et cetera, in the area are already empty because I and my friends or alts have already cleared them all out — but it’s hard to ignore calls for help popping up on my screen just because I know the game mechanics prevent me from doing anything about them.

You can still save Draenei Survivors with Gift of the Naaru after you’ve turned in the quest, but if you cast any other heal on them, it’ll heal them to full and they’ll still lie there moaning and groaning. It’s very frustrating.
Like Rhii, I cast Gift of the Naaru on Draenei Survivors every time it comes off cooldown every time I play through Ammen Vale… and when it *is* on cooldown, I try to stay far enough away from the poor fellows that I can’t hear their piteous cries for help.

I also find this upsetting, although I do understand the necessity of it. Maybe if they just had more phasing…although I’m sure that would be a massive hassle. Incidentally, because of my need to save *all* the survivors, I tend to get myself into trouble in Pit of Saron, since I run after all the slaves and often pull extra trash >_> It’s good my tanks love me :3